Learning from the best practices of other brands is a smart way to improve your own brand management skills. By analyzing what works and what doesn't for successful brands, you can gain insights, inspiration, and guidance for your own brand strategy and planning. In this article, you will learn how to learn from the best practices of other brands in six steps.
The first step is to define what you want to achieve with your brand management. What are your brand vision, mission, values, and personality? What are your target audience, market position, and competitive advantage? How do you measure your brand performance and impact? By clarifying your goals, you can focus your learning on the aspects that matter most to your brand.
To each their own is extremely important in all walks of life and the same holds prominence here as well A brand is like a human being who has their own personality and its associated elements. Each brand stands on certain values and aspects that differentiate them in a variety of ways The clearer a brand is about its own persona...the more it will resonate with its target audience
From my experience, the most important way to consider a brand is to regard it as a living person, learning and evolving. It becomes more nuanced and specific as you understand what key points distinguish your brand from others. Starting with a vision, mission, values, and personality is always the best way to start, but understanding how they all come together to make one rounded unit that achieves the intended goal is the higher perspective.
I have found that many successful brands have at since stage of their evolution enjoyed a sudden uptick in consumer awareness and engagement. The company did “ something” that was different and many times counter intuitive… but it worked. This Is where one can look for inspiration outside of the normal marketing humdrum. Find that catalyst may be applicable and transferable to your own brand or simply need inspired to create your own.
You should also consider the company vision, mission and culture. Make sure all your internal stake holder are understand your brand goals.
Learning from the best practices of other brands involves a strategic and systematic approach to studying successful companies and understanding the principles that contribute to their success. Some of the steps that we can follow are: 1. Identify Successful Brands 2. Research and Analysis: Study Case Studies Competitor Analysis 3. Understand Their Strategies: Marketing and Branding Customer Experience Innovation 4. Engage with Their Content: Website and Social Media Blogs and Thought Leadership 5. Attend Industry Events and Conferences: Networking 6. Seek Inspiration, Not Replication: Adaptation 7. Test and Iterate: Implement and Test Continuous Improvement 8. Stay Updated: Stay Informed
The next step is to find and study other brands that are relevant to your goals. You can look for brands in your industry, niche, or category, as well as brands that target similar audiences, offer similar benefits, or have similar values. You can also look for brands that excel in specific areas, such as design, storytelling, customer service, or innovation. You can use online tools, such as Google Trends, Brandwatch, or SimilarWeb, to discover and compare other brands.
What I find helpful is to 1. Understand the context and the environment in which the brand is operating. 2. Look at some of the unique behaviors of the audience using the brand 3. Evaluate the competitive context 4. Analyze what the successful brand did right and how. What I have also found is the brand owner's ability to adapt what worked with someone to one's own operating environment and context. Rarely do we see an exact fit.
Gone are the days when you had to be stuck with your own industry! Today we are living in an era...where we can draw inspiration on so many fronts from so many brands and this is where the power of best practices comes in What is it that a grocery brand can draw from a mobile brand - well, that's creativity What is it that an apparel brand can draw from a furniture brand - its appeal and attraction Brands always have meaning to draw to their own purpose and scenario and this is where the art & science of brand management comes in The real learning as they say...always comes from the market and the real consumers This is where the long drawn battle of beverage brands comes in and that's a classic case study of what others can learn
In the same way we as people are comprised of different parts, a brand is comprised of parts that might seem inconsequential but add to the general image. Exploring other brands, oftentimes unrelated to your industry, allows you to observe where your brand structure is lacking. And taking note of the experience other brands provide for you that are close to what you want to convey is one of the better ways to enhance the brand you're working on.
This is where you can add a good tier qualitative research agency to give a perpesctive from a different angle. Or simply doing your own objective research
Understanding early adopters & core audience of competitors can give a strategic advantage in refining products/services. They provide valuable feedback, help make informed decisions, give a glimpse of future trends & help transition to the early majority. Here are some strategies for understanding them: direct engagement, in-depth exploration & data analysis. By understanding them, you can gain a competitive advantage, refine products/services & achieve exponential growth. They can help you make informed decisions. The insights you gain from early adopters and core audience members can help you make better decisions about your product or service, such as whether to pivot your strategy or continue refining the current approach.
The third step is to dig deeper into the best practices of other brands. How do they communicate their brand identity and value proposition? How do they connect with their customers and stakeholders? How do they differentiate themselves from their competitors? How do they adapt to changing markets and trends? How do they leverage their strengths and overcome their challenges? You can use frameworks, such as SWOT, PESTEL, or 4Ps, to structure your analysis.
A lot of thing shift since the covid pandemi. Consumer oriented and Online Channel is important now more than ever. A new supply chain approach is also can made a big difference.
Every brand follows and grows through either an adapted framework or having created something of their own When brands get into drawing inspiration from other brands...they make an attempt to compare the practices of different brands thereby identifying commonalities and differences. This helps to pinpoint the practices that seem to have the most significant impact on a brand's success. Every brand undergoes its own journey and hence it becomes all the more important to benchmark not just the current scenario but also track the journey and evolution that it has gone through!
The best practices also include how other brands rise emotions that make their audience feel connected to them: How do other brands optimize their story telling and brand experience both to their digital channels and to the analog experience, to every touchpoint?
The fourth step is to apply what you learned from other brands to your own brand. How can you emulate or adapt their best practices to suit your goals, context, and resources? How can you avoid or overcome their mistakes or weaknesses? How can you fill the gaps or create the opportunities that they missed or ignored? You can use tools, such as mind maps, mood boards, or personas, to brainstorm and visualize your ideas.
Again, in this phase, always make sure all your internal stakeholders are understand and support you. The las thing you need is a ressistance from your own side.
One thing that can always work wonders is drawing inspiration not just from success but from failures of other brands As they say...the real merit is looking at what not the brand is today but what it has gone through over the years Having an internal team of people who bring in cross-sectional exposure holds immense value since this team can look at a variety of aspects to identify the practices that can be adopted internally or those that may need to be iterated to create something better
The fifth step is to test and refine your ideas before implementing them. How do they align with your brand strategy and planning? How do they resonate with your target audience and stakeholders? How do they perform against your key metrics and indicators? You can use methods, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or A/B testing, to collect feedback and data.
Focus on a small area is the key. FGD with the right people is important in the early stage, and then more quantitative research is needed in the furhter step.
The sixth and final step is to keep learning from the best practices of other brands. Brand management is not a one-time project, but a continuous process. The market, the customers, the competitors, and the trends are constantly evolving, and so should your brand. You should monitor and evaluate your brand performance and impact regularly, and look for new sources of inspiration and guidance from other brands.
Ways to learn from competitors include using tools like SpyFu or Social Blade to check out their ad spend or social media monetization, asking AI Chat Bots or SEO tools to tell you what competitor's web pages are best optimized for, or checking out their source code to see what keywords are available for you to see them optimizing on. You can determine if a marketing coach or learning program is best for you by comparing what they offer to what else is on the market, determining how you feel about the cost efficiency basis of their pricing, as well as doing your due diligence to determine value alignment. Due diligence can include referral or review audit, public financial history, & online presence of person in consideration.
When learning from best practices, also look how brands work on recruiting the next generations of consumers while retaining existing users. Reflect on how successful brands continuously evolve and optimise their Marketing Mix without losing sight of their original brand purpose.
Learn the story of each great brand. Each great brand has falls and rises. Do not learn the story of success but lean the stories of rising. Understand what leads to success and to fail. Study the point of beginning of brands. What resources did they have to start their Great brand jorney.
Market study… study your competitors, new comers in the market, see what market leaders are doing. Increase your network, get in touch with the people of your industry; have discussions with them. One of the biggest mistakes companies make, is not able to identify your right competition; even sometimes they don’t give value to the new companies which becomes a threat in later stages. The key to success is to keep an eye on the companies of your interest, what they are doing, how they are doing etc.. Study market and do brainstorming sessions; have workshops; identify; implement; execution….
The last and most critical aspect is to learn from good products and brands that failed or couldn’t keep their place in the market. An analysis on the reason for their failure or why the consumers rejected a brand. This is an important step that helps you avoid some mistakes. Use the 5 Gap analysis to understand where the slipped. Many a times this gives you a niche to position your brand even in a crowded market. Nokia and Blackberry mobile phones are good examples to study
It’s always a good idea to try to figure out what the best practices are and essential to analyse and decide on the best approach. Figuring out how they're working out for individuals that use them, will help you to not reinvent the wheel, to save time and costs. Learning from successful brands is the best choice for adopting them. It is best to be critical. Hence the query is often, "What possible motive could they have for coming up with this?" Those who teach best practices do not necessarily need to be well-known brands. Do understand and evaluate the effectiveness of these practices for your use to trust what you are mimicking. Then you can be innovative and improve on what you consider best fits into your situation.?